Here I am. UNCRUNCHED. “Deciding” To Move On. Michael Arrington, TechCrunch: How the site changed startup culture. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine (Build 20110912042003) A few months ago, Michael Arrington heard a tip that Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr, was starting a new company. Ordinarily, this would have been enough for Arrington, the founder of the blog TechCrunch, to bang out a post with details about Fake's new firm and her backers. The news that someone who started one company is starting another company may not sound like a big deal, but in TechCrunch's startup centric world, it's equivalent to the news that Beyoncé is pregnant. This time, though, Arrington did something that he doesn't do very much—he held off posting the scoop. Instead, he asked Fake to confirm it. Rather than respond to Arrington's email, Fake decided to break the news on her own blog.
Arrington didn't like that one bit. I've never met Arrington, so everything I know about him is from his writing and his stage presence at TechCrunch's many conferences. Now it looks like the Arrington era is over. If it's true that Arrington is out, I'll miss reading him.